UC-NRLF 


SB    153    644 


THE  SEER 
SLABS  I  DBS 

BY  DALLAS  LORE  SHARP 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 


IN    THE    DOORWA-V,    SLABSIUES 


SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

":  \ 

BY 

DALLAS  LORE  SHARP 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

ilitit'rsi&e  prrss  Cambridge 
1921 


COPYRIGHT,    IQIO,   BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 

COI'VKIGHT,    jgil    AND    IQ21,    BY    DALLAS   LOKE   SHAHP 

ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 


TO 
HENRY  FORD 

LOVER  OF  BIRDS 
FRIEND  OF  JOHN  BURROUGHS 


457646 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 


THE 
SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

i 

THIS  title,  "The  Seer  of  Slabsides,"  does 
not  quite  fit  John  Burroughs — the  Bur 
roughs  I  knew.  He  was  a  see-er.  A 
lover  of  nature,  he  watched  the  ways 
of  bird  and  beast ;  a  lover  of  life,  he 
thought  out  and  wrought  out  a  serene 
human  philosophy  that  made  him  teach 
er  and  interpreter  of  the  simple  and  the 
near  at  hand  rather  than  of  such  things 
as  are  hidden  and  far  off.  He  was  alto 
gether  human  ;  a  poet,  not  a  prophet ;  a 
great  lover  of  the  earth,  of  his  portion  of 
it  in  New  York  State,  and  of  everything 
and  everybody  dwelling  there  with  him. 


OF  SLABSIDES 

He  has  added  volumes  to  the  area  ot 
New  York  State, -and  peopled  them  with 
immortal  folk  —  little  folk,  bees,  blue 
birds,  speckled  trout,  and  wild  straw 
berries.  He  was  chiefly  concerned  with 
living  at  Slabsides,  or  at  Woodchuck 
Lodge,  and  with  writing  what  he  lived. 
He  loved  much,  observed  and  inter 
preted  much,  speculated  a  little,  but 
dreamed  none  at  all.  "  The  Lover  of 
Woodchuck  Lodge "  I  might  have 
called  him,  rather  than  "  The  Seer  of 
Slabsides/' 

Pietro,  the  sculptor,  has  made  him  rest 
ing  upon  a  boulder,  his  arm  across  his  fore 
head,  as  his  eyes,  shielded  from  the  sun, 
peer  steadily  into  the  future  and  the  far 
away.  I  sat  with  the  old  naturalist  on 
this  same  boulder.  It  was  in  October,  and 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     5 

they  laid  him  beside  it  the  following 
April,  on  his  eighty-fourth  birthday.  I 
watched  him  shield  his  eyes  with  his 
arm,  as  the  sculptor  has  made  him,  and 
gaze  far  away  over  the  valley  to  the  roll 
ing  hills  against  the  sky,  where  his  look 
lingered,  sadly,  wearily,  for  a  moment  at 
their  vaunting  youth  and  beauty ;  then 
coming  instantly  back  to  the  field  below 
us,  he  said :  "  This  field  is  as  full  of 
woodchucks  as  it  was  eighty  years  ago. 
I  caught  one  right  here  yesterday.  How 
eternally  interesting  life  is  !  I  've  studied 
the  woodchuck  all  my  life,  and  there  's 
no  getting  to  the  bottom  of  him." 

He  knew,  as  I  knew,  that  he  might 
never  rest  against  this  rock  again.  He 
had  played  upon  it  as  a  child.  He  now 
sleeps  beside  it.  But  so  interesting  was 


6     THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

the  simplest,  the  most  familiar  thing  to 
him,  that  the  long,  long  twilight,  already 
filling  the  valley  and  creeping  up  toward 
him,  still  gave  him  a  chance,  as  we  sat 
there,  to  watch  the  woodchuck  slipping 
from  his  burrow.  Had  I  been  the  sculp 
tor,  I  should  have  made  the  old  natural 
ist  lying  flat  on  the  round  of  that  rock, 
his  white  beard  a  patch  of  lichen,  his 
eyes  peering  from  under  his  slouch  hat 
over  the  top  of  the  boulder  at  something 
near  at  hand — at  the  woodchuck  feed 
ing  below  in  the  pasture. 

He  was  the  simplest  man  I  ever  knew, 
simpler  than  a  child ;  for  children  are 
often  self-conscious  and  uninterested, 
whereas  Burroughs's  interest]  and  curios 
ity  grew  with  the  years,  and  his  direct 
ness,  his  spontaneity,  his  instant  pleasure 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     7 

and  his  constant  joy  in  living,  his  utter 
naturalness  and  naivete  amounted  to 
genius.  They  were  his  genius  —  and  a 
stumbling-block  to  many  a  reader.  Simi- 
lia  similibus  curantur,  or  a  thief  to  catch 
a  thief,  as  we  say ;  and  it  certainly  re 
quires  such  a  degree  of  simplicity  to  un 
derstand  Burroughs  as  few  of  us  possess. 
Not  every  author  improves  upon  per 
sonal  acquaintance,  but  an  actual  visit 
with  Burroughs  seems  almost  necessary 
for  the  right  approach  to  his  books. 
Matter  and  manner,  the  virtues  and 
faults  of  his  writings,  the  very  things  he 
did  not  write  about,  are  all  explained  in 
the  presence  of  a  man  of  eighty-three 
who  brings  home  a  woodchuck  from  the 
field  for  dinner,  and  saves  its  pelt  for  a 
winter  coat.  And  with  me  at  dinner 


8     THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

that  day  were  other  guests,  a  lover  of 
Whitman  from  Bolton,  England,  a  dis 
tinguished  American  artist,  and  others. 
The  country  road,  hardly  more  than 
a  farm  lane,  shies  up  close  to  Wood- 
chuck  Lodge  as  it  goes  by.  Here  on  the 
vine-grown  porch  was  the  cot  of  the 
old  naturalist,  as  close  to  the  road  as  it 
could  get.  Burroughs  loved  those  remote 
ancestral  hills,  and  all  the  little  folk  who 
inhabitated  them  with  him.  He  was  as 
retiring  and  shy  as  a  song  sparrow  — 
who  nests  in  the  bushes,  and  sings  from 
the  fence  stake.  No  man  loved  his  fel 
low-man  more  than  Burroughs.  Here 
in  his  cot  he  could  watch  the  stars  come 
out  upon  the  mountain-tops  and  see  the 
fires  of  dawn  kindle  where  the  stars  had 
shone,  and  here,  too,  he  could  see  every 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     9 

passer-by  and,  without  rising,  for  he  had 
need  to  rest,  he  could  reach  out  a  hand 
of  welcome  to  all  who  stopped  on  their 
journey  past. 

And  everybody  stopped.  If  he  had  no 
fresh  woodchuck  to  serve  them,  he  would 
have  one  out  of  a  can,  for  no  less  in  his 
home  than  in  his  heart  had  he  made 
provision  for  the  coming  guest.  The 
stores  of  the  village  were  far  away,  but 
there  was  no  lack  of  canned  woodchuck 
and  hospitality  in  the  Lodge.  Few  men 
have  had  more  friends  or  a  wider  range 
of  friends  than  Burroughs.  And  months 
later,  as  I  sat  looking  over  the  strange 
medley  of  them  gathered  at  his  funeral, 
I  wondered  at  them,  and  asked  myself 
what  was  it  in  this  simple,  childlike 
man,  this  lover  of  the  bluebird,  of  the 


io     THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

earth  on  his  breast  and  the  sky  on  his 
back,  that  drew  these  great  men  and  lit 
tle  children  about  him.  He  was  ele 
mental.  He  kept  his  soul.  And  through 
the  press  men  crowded  up  to  touch  him, 
and  the  virtue  that  went  out  from  him 
restored  to  them  their  souls — their  blue 
bird  with  the  earth  on  its  breast  and  the 
sky,  the  blue  sky,  on  its  back.. 


II 

AND  this  same  restoration  I  find  in  his 
books.  John  Burroughs  began  that  long 
line  of  books  by  writing  an  essay  for  the 
"  Atlantic  Monthly/'  entitled  "  Expres 
sion," —  "a  somewhat  Emersonian  Ex 
pression,"  says  its  author,  —  which  was 
printed  in  the  "  Atlantic  "  for  Novem 
ber,  1860,  sixty-one  years  ago;  and  in 
each  of  those  sixty-one  years  he  has  not 
failed  to  publish  one  or  more  essays  here 
where  "Expression"  led  the  way. 

Sixty-one  years  are  not  threescore  and 
ten,  being  nine  years  short.  Many  men 
have  lived  and  wrought  for  more  than 
threescore  and  ten  years;  butBurroughs's 
"  Atlantic  "  years  are  unique.  To  write 


12     THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

without  a  break  for  sixty-one  years,  and 
keep  one's  eye  undimmed,  one's  natural 
force  unabated,  one's  soul  unfagged  and 
as  fresh  as  dawn,  is  of  itself  a  great  hu 
man  achievement. 

Only  a  few  weeks  before  his  death  he 
sent  me  a  copy  of  the  last  book  that  he 
should  see  through  the  press,  and  who 
shall  say  that  "Accepting  the  Universe" 
lacks  anything  of  the  vigor  or  finish  or 
freshness  found  in  his  earliest  books?  It 
is  philosophical,  theological,  indeed,  in 
matter,  and  rather  controversial  in  style; 
its  theme  is  like  that  of  "The  Light  of 
Day,"  a  theme  his  pen  was  ever  touch 
ing,  but  nowhere  with  more  largeness 
and  beauty  (and  inconsistency)  than  here. 
For  Burroughs,  though  deeply  religious, 
wasapoor  theologian.  He  hated  cant,  and 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     13 

feared  the  very  vocabulary  of  theology  as 
he  feared  the  dark.  Life  was  remarkably 
single  with  Burroughs  and  all  of  a  piece. 
In  a  little  diary,  one  of  the  earliest  he 
has  left  us,  he  asks,  under  date  of  October 
8,  1860  (a  month  before  his  first  essay 
appeared  in  the  "  Atlantic  ") : 

"Is  there  no  design  of  analogy  in  this 
Universe?  Are  these  striking  resem 
blances  that  wed  remote  parts,  these 
family  traits  that  break  out  all  through 
nature  and  that  show  the  unity  of  the 
creating  mind,  the  work  of  chance! 
Are  these  resemblances  and  mutual  an- 
swerings  of  part  to  part  that  human  in 
telligence  sees  and  recognizes  only  in  its 
most  exalted  moments  —  when  its  vision 
is  clearest  —  a  mere  accident?" 

That  was  written  in  pencil  filling  a 


14    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

whole  page  of  his  diary  for  1860.  On 
page  220  of  "  Accepting  the  Universe/' 
published  sixty-one  years  later,  and  only 
a  short  time  before  his  death,  we  find 
this  attempted  answer : 

"  So,  when  we  ask,  Is  there  design  in 
Nature  ?  we  must  make  clear  what  part 
or  phase  of  Nature  we  refer  to.  Can  we 
say  that  the  cosmos  as  a  whole  shows 
any  design  in  our  human  sense  of  the 
word  ?  I  think  not.  The  Eternal  has  no 
purpose  that  our  language  can  compass. 
There  can  be  neither  center  nor  circum 
ference  to  the  Infinite.  The  distribution 
of  land  and  water  on  the  globe  cannot  be 
the  result  of  design  any  more  than  can 
the  shapes  of  the  hills  and  mountains,  or 
Saturn's  rings,  or  Jupiter's  moons.  The 
circular  forms  and  orbits  of  the  universe 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     15 

must  be  the  result  of  the  laws  of  matter 
and  force  that  prevail  in  celestial  me 
chanics  ;  this  is  not  a  final  solution  of 
the  riddle,  but  is  as  near  as  we  can  come 
to  it.  One  question  stands  on  another 
question,  and  that  on  another,  and  so  on, 
and  the  bottom  question  we  can  never 
reach  and  formulate." 

It  is  a  beautiful  illustration  of  the  con 
tinuity,  the  oneness  of  this  singularly 
simple  life ;  and  it  is  as  good  an  illustration 
of  how  the  vigor  of  his  youth  steadies 
into  a  maturity  of  strength  with  age, 
which  in  many  a  late  essay  —  as  in  "  The 
Long  Road/'  for  instance — lifts  one 
and  bears  one  down  the  unmeasured 
reaches  of  geologic  time  as  none  of  his 
earlier  chapters  do. 

Many  men  have  written  more   than 


16     THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

John  Burroughs.  His  twenty-five  vol 
umes  are  perhaps  nothing  remarkable  for 
sixty  years  of  steady  writing.  But  it 
is  remarkable  to  come  up  to  four  and 
eighty  with  one  book  just  off  the  press, 
two  more  books  in  manuscript  to  appear 
after  the  light  has  failed  ;  for  there  is  still 
a  book  of  miscellaneous  papers,  and  some 
studies  on  Emerson  and  Thoreau  yet  to 
be  published. 

And  I  think  it  a  rather  remarkable 
lot  of  books,  beginning  with  "  Wake- 
Robin,"  running  down  through  the  ti 
tles,  with  "  Winter  Sunshine,"  "  Birds 
and  Poets,"  "  Locusts  and  Wild  Honey," 
"Pepacton,"  "Fresh  Fields,"  "Signs 
and  Seasons,"  "  Riverby,"  "  Far  and 
Near,"  "Ways  of  Nature,"  "Leaf  and 
Tendril,"  "The  Summit  of  the  Years," 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES      17 

"Time  and  Change,"  "The  Breath  of 
Life/'  "  Under  the  Apple-Trees,"  and 
"Field  and  Study,"  to  "Accepting  the 
Universe,"  for  these  books  deal  very 
largely  with  nature,  and  by  themselves 
constitute  the  largest,  most  significant 
group  of  nature-books  that  have  come, 
perhaps,  from  any  single  pen. 

These  sixteen  or  seventeen  volumes 
are  John  Burroughs's  most  characteristic 
and  important  work.  If  he  has  done  any 
desirable  thing,  made  any  real  contribu 
tion  to  American  literature,  that  contri 
bution  will  be  found  among  these  books. 
His  other  books  are  eminently  worth 
while:  there  is  reverent,  honest  thinking 
in  his  religious  essays,  a  creedless  but  an 
absolute  and  joyous  faith ;  there  is  sim 
ple  and  exquisite  feeling  in  his  poems; 


1 8     THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

close  analysis  and  an  unmitigatedness 
wholly  Whitmanesque  in  his  interpreta 
tion  of  Whitman  ;  and  no  saner,  happier 
criticism  anywhere  than  in  his  "  Liter 
ary  Values."  There  are  many  other  ex 
cellent  critics,  however,  many  poets  and 
religious  writers,  many  other  excellent 
nature-writers,  too ;  but  is  there  any  other 
who  has  written  so  much  upon  the  ways 
of  nature  as  they  parallel  and  cross  the 
ways  of  men,  upon  so  great  a  variety  of 
nature's  forms  and  expressions,  and  done 
it  with  such  abiding  love,  with  such 
truth  and  charm  ? 

Yet  such  a  comparison  is  beyond 
proof,  except  in  the  least  of  the  literary 
values  —  mere  quantity;  and  it  may  be 
with  literature  as  with  merchandise:  the 
larger  the  cask  the  greater  the  tare. 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     19 

Charm?  Is  not  charm  that  which  / 
chance  to  like,  or  you  chance  to  like  ? 
Others  have  written  of  nature  with  as 
much  love  and  truth  as  has  John  Bur 
roughs,  and  each  with  his  own  peculiar 
charm  :  Audubon,  with  the  spell  of  wild 
places  and  the  thrill  of  fresh  wonder ; 
Traherne,  with  the  ecstasy  of  the  reli 
gious  mystic ;  Gilbert  White,  with  the 
sweetness  of  the  evening  and  the  morn 
ing;  Thoreau,  with  the  heat  of  noon 
day;  Jefferies,  with  just  a  touch  of  twi 
light  shadowing  all  his  pages.  We  want 
them  severally  as  they  are;  John  Bur 
roughs  as  he  is,  neither  wandering  "  lonely 
as  a  cloud"  in  search  of  poems,  nor 
skulking  in  the  sedges  along  the  banks 
of  the  Guaso  Nyero  looking  for  lions. 
We  want  him  at  Slabsides,  near  his 


20    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

celery  fields,  or  at  Woodchuck  Lodge 
overlooking  the  high  fields  that  run  down 
from  the  sky  into  Montgomery  Valley. 
And  whatever  the  literary  quality  of  our 
other  nature-writers,  no  one  of  them  has 
come  any  nearer  than  John  Burroughs  to 
that  difficult  ideal — a  union  of  thought 
and  form,  no  more  to  be  separated  than 
the  heart  and  the  bark  of  a  live  tree. 

Take  John  Burroughs's  work  as  a 
whole,  and  it  is  beyond  dispute  the  most 
complete,  the  most  revealing,  of  all  our 
outdoor  literature.  His  pages  lie  open 
like  the  surface  of  a  pond,  sensitive  to 
every  wind,  or  calm  as  the  sky,  holding 
the  clouds  and  the  distant  blue,  and  the 
dragon-fly,  stiff-winged,  and  pinned  to 
the  golden  knob  of  a  spatter-dock. 

All    outdoor    existence,   all    outdoor 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     21 

phenomena,  are  deeply  interesting  to 
him.  There  is  scarcely  a  form  of  out 
door  life,  scarcely  a  piece  of  landscape, 
or  natural  occurrence  characteristic  of 
the  Eastern  States,  which  has  not  been 
dealt  with  suggestively  in  his  pages :  the 
rabbit  under  his  porch,  the  paleozoic  peb 
ble  along  his  path,  the  salt  breeze  borne 
inland  by  the  Hudson,  the  whirl  of  a  snow 
storm,  the  work  of  the  honey  bees,  the 
procession  of  the  seasons  over  Slabsides, 
even  the  abundant  soil  out  of  which  he 
and  his  grapes  grew  and  which,  "incor 
ruptible  and  undefiled,"  he  calls  divine. 
He  devotes  an  entire  chapter  to  the 
bluebird,  a  chapter  to  the  fox,  one  to 
the  apple,  another  to  the  wild  straw 
berry.  The  individual,  the  particular 
thing,  is  always  of  particular  interest  to 


22    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

him.  But  so  is  its  habitat,  the  whole  of 
its  environment.  He  sees  the  gem,  not 
cut  and  set  in  a  ring,  but  rough  in  the 
mine,  where  it  glitters  on  the  hand  of 
nature,  and  glitters  all  the  more  that  it 
is  worn  in  the  dark.  Naturally  John  Bur 
roughs  has  written  much  about  the 
birds ;  yet  he  is  not  an  ornithologist. 
His  theme  has  not  been  this  or  that,  but 
nature  in  its  totality,  as  it  is  held  within 
the  circle  of  his  horizon,  as  it  surrounds, 
supports,  and  quickens  him, 

That  nature  does  support  and  quicken 
the  spiritual  of  him,  no  less  than  the 
physical,  is  the  inspiration  of  his  writ 
ing  and  the  final  comment  it  requires. 
Whether  the  universe  was  shaped  from 
chaos  with  man  as  its  end,  is  a  question 
of  real  concern  to  John  Burroughs,  but 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    23 

of  less  concern  to  him  than  the  problem 
of  shaping  himself  to  the  universe,  of 
living  as  long  as  he  can  upon  a  world  so 
perfectly  adapted  to  life,  if  only  one  be 
physically  and  spiritually  adaptable.  To 
take  the  earth  as  one  finds  it,  to  plant 
one's  self  in  it,  to  plant  one's  roof-tree 
in  it,  to  till  it,  to  understand  it  and  the 
laws  which  govern  it,  and  the  Perfection 
which  created  it,  and  to  love  it  all — this 
is  the  heart  of  JohnBurroughs's  religion, 
the  pith  of  his  philosophy,  the  conclu 
sion  of  his  books. 

But  if  a  perfect  place  for  the  fit,  how 
hard  a  place  is  this  world  for  the  lazy, 
the  ignorant,  the  stubborn,  the  weak, 
the  physically  and  spiritually  ill!  So 
hard  that  a  torpid  liver  is  almost  a  mor 
tal  handicap,  the  stars  in  their  courses 


24    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

fighting  against  the  bilious  to  defeat 
them,  to  drive  them  to  take  exercise,  to 
a  copious  drinking  of  water,  to  a  knowl 
edge  of  burdock  and  calomel  —  to  obedi 
ence  and  understanding. 

Underlying  all  of  John  Burroughs's 
thought  and  feeling,  framing  every  one 
of  his  books,  is  a  deep  sense  of  the  per 
fection  of  nature,  the  sharing  of  which 
is  physical  life,  the  understanding  of 
which  is  spiritual  life,  is  knowledge  of 
God  himself,  in  some  part  of  His  per 
fection.  "  I  cannot  tell  what  the  simple 
apparition  of  the  earth  and  sky  mean  to 
me;  I  think  that  at  rare  intervals  one 
sees  that  they  have  an  immense  spirit 
ual  meaning,  altogether  unspeakable, 
and  that  they  are  the  great  helps,  after 
all."  How  the  world  was  made — its 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    25 

geology,  its  biology  —  is  the  great  ques 
tion,  for  its  answer  is  poetry  and  reli 
gion  and  life  itself.  John  Burroughs  was 
serenely  sure  as  to  how  the  world  was 
made;  the  theological  speculation  as  to 
<why  it  was  made,  he  answered  by  grow 
ing  small  fruits  on  it,  living  upon  it, 
writing  about  it. 

Temperamentally  John  Burroughs  was 
an  optimist,  as  vocationally  he  was  a 
writer,  and  avocationally  a  vine-dresser% 
He  planted  and  expected  to  gather  — 
grapes  from  his  grapevines,  books  from 
his  book-vines,  years,  satisfactions,  sor 
rows,  joys,  all  that  was  due  him. 

The  waters  know  their  own  and  draw 

The  brook  that  springs  in  yonder  heights ; 

So  flows  the  good  with  equal  law 
Unto  the  soul  of  pure  delights. 


26    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

And  what  is  it  that  was  due  him? 
Everything ;  everything  essential ;  as 
everything  essential  is  due  the  pine- 
tree,  the  prairie,  the  very  planet.  Is  not 
this  earth  a  star  ?  Are  not  the  prairie, 
the  pine-tree,  and  man  the  dust  of  stars? 
each  a  part  of  the  other  ?  all  parts  of 
one  whole  —  a  universe,  round,  rolling, 
without  beginning,  without  end,  with 
out  flaw,  without  lack,  a  universe  self- 
sustained,  perfect? 

I  stay  my  haste,  I  make  delays, 
For  what  avails  this  eager  pace  ? 

I  stand  amid  the  eternal  ways, 

And  what  is  mine  shall  know  my  face. 

John  Burroughs  came  naturally  by  such 
a  view  of  nature  and  its  consequent  opti 
mism.  It  was  due  partly  to  his  having 
been  born  and  brought  up  on  a  farm 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    27 

where  he  had  what  was  due  him  from 
the  start.  Such  birth  and  bringing-up  is 
the  natural  right  of  every  boy.  To  know 
and  to  do  the  primitive,  the  elemental ; 
to  go  barefoot,  to  drive  the  cows,  to 
fish,  and  to  go  to  school  with  not  too 
many  books,  but  with  "plenty  of  real 
things  "  —  these  are  nominated  in  every 
boy's  bond. 

Serene,  I  fold  my  hands  and  wait, 

is  the  poem  of  a  childhood  on  the  farm, 
and  the  poem  of  a  manhood  on  the  farm, 
in  spite  of  the  critic  who  says : 

"  We  have  never  ceased  to  wonder 
that  this  friend  of  the  birds,  this  kindly 
interpreter  of  nature  in  all  her  moods, 
was  born  and  brought  up  on  a  farm;  it-. 
was  in  that  smiling  country  watered  by 
the  east  branch  of  the  Delaware.  No 


28    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

man,  as  a  rule,  knows  less  about  the 
colors,  songs,  and  habits  of  birds,  and  is 
more  indifferent  to  natural  scenery  than 
the  man  born  to  the  soil,  who  delves  in 
it  and  breathes  its  odors.  Contact  with 
it  and  laborious  days  seem  to  deaden  his 
faculties  of  observation  and  deprive  him 
of  all  sympathy  with  nature." 

During  the  days  when  the  deadening 
might  have  occurred,  John  Burroughs 
was  teaching  school.  Then  he  became 
a  United  States  bank  examiner,  and  only 
after  that  returned  to  the  country — to 
Riverby  and  Slabsides,  and  Woodchuck 
Lodge, — to  live  out  the  rest  of  his  years, 
years  as  full  of  life  and  books  as  his  vines 
along  the  Hudson  are  full  of  life  and 
grapes. 

Could  it  be  otherwise?  If  men  and 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    29 

grapes  are  of  the  same  divine  dust,  should 
they  not  grow  according  to  the  same 
divine  laws?  Here  in  the  vineyard  along 
the  Hudson,  John  Burroughs  planted 
himself  in  planting  his  vines,  and  every 
trellis  that  he  set  has  become  his  own 
support  and  stay.  The  very  clearing  of 
the  land  for  his  vineyard  was  a  prepara 
tion  of  himself  physically  and  morally 
for  a  more  fruitful  life. 

"  Before  the  snow  was  off  in  March," 
he  says  in  "Literary  Values,"  "we  set 
to  work  under-draining  the  moist  and 
springy  places.  My  health  and  spirits 
improved  daily.  I  seemed  to  be  under- 
draining  my  own  life  and  carrying  off 
the  stagnant  water,  as  well  as  that  of 
the  land."  And  so  he  was.  There  are 
other  means  of  doing  it  —  taking  drugs, 


30    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

playing  golf,  walking  the  streets;  but 
surely  the  advantages  and  the  poetry  are 
all  in  favor  of  the  vineyard.  And  how 
much  fitter  a  place  the  vineyard  to  mel 
low  and  ripen  life,  than  a  city  roof  of 
tarry  pebbles  and  tin ! 

Though  necessarily  personal  and  sub 
jective,  John  Burroughs's  writing  is  en 
tirely  free  from  self-exploitation  and 
confession.  There  are  pages  scattered 
here  and  there  dealing  briefly  and  frankly 
with  his  own  natural  history,  but  our 
thanks  are  due  to  John  Burroughs  that 
he  never  made  a  business  of  watching 
himself.  Once  he  was  inveigled  by  a 
magazine  editor  into  doing  "An  Ego 
tistical  Chapter/'  wherein  we  find  him 
as  a  boy  of  sixteen  reading  essays,  and 
capable  at  that  age  of  feeding  for  a 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    31 

whole  year  upon  Dr.  Johnson !  Then 
we  find  him  reading  Whipple's  essays, 
and  the  early  outdoor  papers  of  Higgin- 
son ;  and  later,  at  twenty-three,  settling 
down  with  Emerson's  essays,  and  getting 
one  of  his  own  into  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly." 

How  early  his  own  began  to  come  to 
him ! 

That  first  essay  in  the  "Atlantic" 
was  followed  by  a  number  of  outdoor 
sketches  in  the  New  York  "  Leader  "  — 
written,  Burroughs  says,  "mainly  to 
break  the  spell  of  Emerson's  influence 
and  get  upon  ground  of  my  own."  He 
succeeded  in  both  purposes ;  and  a  large 
and  exceedingly  fertile  piece  of  ground 
it  proved  to  be,  too,  this  which  he  got 
upon !  Already  the  young  writer  had 


32    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

chosen  his  field  and  his  crop.  The  out- 
of-doors  has  been  largely  his  literary 
material,  as  the  essay  has  been  largely 
his  literary  form,  ever  since.  He  has 
done  other  things  —  volumes  of  literary 
studies  and  criticisms ;  but  his  theme 
from  first  to  last  has  been  the  Great  Book 
of  Nature,  a  page  of  which,  here  and 
there,  he  has  tried  to  read  to  us. 

Burroughs's  work,  in  outdoor  liter 
ature,  is  a  distinct  species,  with  new 
and  well-marked  characteristics.  He  is 
the  nature-writer,  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  naturalist  in  Gilbert  White,  the 
mystic  in  Traherne,  the  philosopher  in 
Emerson,  the  preacher,  poet,  critic  in 
Thoreau,  the  humorist  in  Charles  Dudley 
Warner.  As  we  now  know  the  nature- 
writer  we  come  upon  him  for  the  first 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    33 

time  in  John  Burroughs.  *  Such  credit 
might  have  gone  to  Thomas  Wentworth 
Higginson,  had  he  not  been  something 
else  before  he  was  a  lover  of  nature  —  of 
letters  first,  then  of  flowers,  carrying  his 
library  into  the  fields;  whereas  Bur 
roughs  brings  the  fields  into  the  library. 
The  essay  whose  matter  is  nature,  whose 
moral  is  human,  whose  manner  is  strictly 
literary,  belongs  to  John  Burroughs.  His 
work  is  distinguished  by  this  threefold 
and  even  emphasis.  In  almost  every  other 
of  our  early  outdoor  writers  either  the 
naturalist  or  the  moralist  or  the  stylist 
holds  the  pen. 

Early  or  late,  this  or  that,  good  out 
door  writing  must  be  marked,  first,  by 
fidelity  to  fact ;  and,  secondly,  by  sin 
cerity  of  expression.  Like  qualities  mark 


34    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

all  good  literature;  but  they  are  them 
selves  the  very  literature  of  nature.  When 
we  take  up  a  nature-book  we  ask  (and  it 
was  Burroughs  who  taught  us  to  ask), 
"  Is  the  record  true  ?  Is  the  writing 
honest?" 

In  these  many  volumes  by  John  Bur 
roughs  there  are  many  observations,  and 
it  is  more  than  likely  that  some  of  them 
may  be  wrong,  but  it  is  not  possible 
that  any  of  them  could  be  mixed  with 
observations  that  Burroughs  knows  he 
never  made.  If  Burroughs  has  written 
a  line  of  sham  natural  history,  which  line 
is  it?  In  a  preface  to  "Wake-Robin/* 
the  author  says  his  readers  have  some 
times  complained  that  they  do  not  see 
the  things  which  he  sees  in  the  woods; 
but  I  doubt  if  there  ever  was  a  reader 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    35 

who  suspected  John  Burroughs   of  not 
seeing  the  things. 

His  reply  to  these  complaints  is  sig 
nificant,  being  in  no  manner  a  defense, 
but  an  exquisite'explanation,  instead,  of 
the  difference  between  the  nature  which 
anybody  may  see  in  the  woods  and  the 
nature  that  every  individual  writer,  be 
cause  he  is  a  writer,  and  an  individual, 
must  put  into  his  book:  a  difference  like 
that  between  the  sweet-water  gathered 
by  the  bee  from  the  flowers  and  the  drop 
of  acid-stung  honey  deposited  by  the  bee 
in  the  comb.  The  sweet-water  under 
goes  a  chemical  change  in  being  brought 
to  the  hive,  as  the  wild  nature  under 
goes  a  literary  change — by  the  addition 
of  the  writer's  self  to  the  nature,  while 
with  the  sweet-water  it  is  by  the  addi 
tion  of  the  bee. 


36    THE  SEER  OP  SLABSIDES 

One  must  be  able  to  walk  to  an  edi 
torial  office  and  back,  and  all  the  way 
walk  humbly  with  his  theme,  as  Bur 
roughs  ever  does  —  not  entirely  for 
getful  of  himself,  nor  of  me  (because  he 
has  invited  me  along) ;  but  I  must  be 
quiet  and  not  disturb  the  fishing  —  if  we 
go  by  way  of  a  trout-stream. 

True  to  the  facts,  Burroughs  is  a 
great  deal  more  than  scientific,  for  he 
loves  the  things  —  the  birds,  hills,  sea 
sons —  as  well  as  the  truths  about  them  ; 
and  true  to  himself,  he  is  not  by  any  means 
a  simple  countryman  who  has  never  seen 
the  city,  a  natural  idyl,  who  lisps  in 
books  and  essays,  because  the  essays 
come.  He  is  fully  aware  of  the  thing 
he  wants  to  do,  and  by  his  own  confes 
sion  has  a  due  amount  of  trouble  shap- 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     37 

ing  his  raw  material  into  finished  literary 
form.  He  is  quite  in  another  class  from 
the  authors  of"  The  Complete  Angler  " 
and  "New  England's  Rarities  Discov 
ered."  In  Isaak  Walton,  to  quote  Leslie 
Stephen,  "a  happy  combination  of  circum 
stances  has  provided  us  with  a  true  coun 
try  idyl,  fresh  and  racy  from  the  soil, 
not  consciously  constructed  by  the  most 
skillful  artistic  hand/' 

Now  the  skillful  artistic  hand  is 
everywhere  seen  in  John  Burroughs. 
What  writer  in  these  days  could  expect 
happy  combinations  of  circumstances 
in  sufficient  numbers  for  so  many  vol 
umes  ? 

But  being  an  idyl,  when  you  come  to 
think  of  it,  is  not  the  result  of  a  happy 
combination  of  circumstances,  but  rather 


38    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

of  stars  —  of  horoscope.  You  are  born  an 
idyl  or  you  are  not,  and  where  and  when 
you  live  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

Who  would  look  for  a  true  country 
idyl  to-day  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia  ? 
Yet  one  came  out  of  there  yesterday, 
and  lies  here  open  before  me,  on  the 
table.  It  is  a  slender  volume,  called 
"  With  the  Birds,  An  Affectionate  Study," 
by  Caroline  Eliza  Hyde.  The  author  is 
discussing  the  general  subject  of  nomen 
clature  and  animal  distribution,  and  says : 

"  When  the  Deluge  covered  the  then 
known  face  of  the  earth,  the  birds  were 
drowned  with  every  other  living  thing, 
except  those  that  Noah,  commanded 
by  God,  took  two  by  two  into  the  Ark. 

"  When  I  reflect  deeply  and  earnestly 
about  the  Ark,  as  every  one  should, 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     39 

thoughts  crowd  my  mind  with  an  irre 
sistible  force." 

[And  they  crowd  my  mind,  too.] 
"  Noah  and  his  family  had  preserved 
the  names  of  the  birds  given  them  by 
Adam.  This  is  assured,  for  Noah  sent  a 
raven  and  a  dove  out  to  see  if  the  waters 
had  abated,  and  we  have  birds  of  that 
name  now.  Nothing  was  known  of  our 
part  of  the  globe,  so  these  birds  must 
have  remained  in  the  Holy  Land  for 
centuries.  We  do  not  hear  of  them  until 
America  was  discovered.  .  .  . 

"  Bats  come  from  Sur.  They  are  very 
black  mouse-like  birds,  and  disagreeable. 
.  .  .  The  bobolink  is  not  mentioned  in 
the  Bible,  but  it  is  doubtless  a  primitive 
bird.  The  cock  that  crows  too  early  in 
the  morning  .  .  .  can  hardly  be  classed 


40    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

with  the  song-birds.  The  name  of  the 
humming-bird  is  not  mentioned  in  the 
Bible,  but  as  there  is  nothing  new  under 
the  sun,  he  is  probably  a  primitive  bird." 

Burroughs  would  have  agreed  that  the 
humming-bird  is  probably  a  primitive 
bird ;  and  also  that  this  is  a  true  idyl, 
and  that  he  could  not  write  a  true  idyl 
if  he  tried.  No  one  could  write  like  that 
by  trying.  And  what  has  any  happy 
combination  of  circumstances  to  do  with 
it?  No,  a  book  essentially  is  only  a  per 
sonality  in  type,  and  he  who  would  not 
be  frustrated  of  his  hope  to  write  a  true 
idyl  must  himself  be  born  a  true  idyl. 
A  fine  Miltonic  saying! 

John  Burroughs  was  not  an  idyl,  but  an 
essayist,  with  a  love  for  books  only  sec 
ond  to  his  love  for  nature ;  a  watcher  in 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    41 

the  woods,  a  tiller  of  the  soil,  a  reader, 
critic,  thinker,  poet,  whose  chief  busi 
ness  these  sixty  years  has  been  the  inter 
pretation  of  the  out-of-doors. 

Upon  him  as  interpreter  and  observer, 
certain  of  his  books,  "  Ways  of  Nature  " 
and  "Leaf  and  Tendril/'  are  an  interest 
ing  comment. 

Truth  does  not  always  make  good 
literature,  not  when  it  is  stranger  than 
fiction,  as  it  often  is;  and  the  writer  who 
sticks  to  the  truth  of  nature  must  some 
times  do  it  at  the  cost  of  purely  literary 
ends.  Have  I  sacrificed  truth  to  liter 
ature  ?  asks  Burroughs  of  his  books. 
Have  I  seen  in  nature  the  things  that 
are  there,  or  the  strange  man-things, 
the  "  winged  creeping  things  which  have 
four  feet,"  and  which  were  an  abomina- 


42    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

tion  to  the  ancient  Hebrews,  but  which 
the  readers  of  modern  nature-writing 
do  greedily  devour  — are  these  the  things 
I  have  seen  ?  And  for  an  answer  he  sets 
about  a  reexamination  of  all  he  has 
written,  from  " Wake-Robin "  to  "Far 
and  Near,"  hoping  "that  the  result  of 
the  discussion  or  threshing  will  not  be 
to  make  the  reader  love  the  animals  less, 
but  rather  to  love  the  truth  more." 

But  the  result,  as  embodied  in  "Ways 
of  Nature"  and  in  "  Leaf  and  Tendril," 
is  quite  the  opposite,  I  fear ;  for  these 
two  volumes  are  more  scientific  in  tone 
than  any  of  his  other  work ;  and  it  is 
the  mission,  not  of  science,  but  of  liter 
ature,  to  quicken  our  love  for  animals, 
even  for  truth.  Science  only  adds  to  the 
truth.  Yet  here,  in  spite  of  himself, 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSTDES    43 

Burroughs  is  more  the  writer,  more  the 
interpreter,  than  the  investigator.  He 
is  constantly  forgetting  his  scientific  the 
sis,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  account  of 
his  neighbor's  errant  cow.  He  succeeds 
finally,  however,  in  reducing  her  fairly 
well  to  a  mechanical  piece  of  beef  act 
ing  to  vegetable  stimuli  upon  a  nerve 
ganglion  located  somewhere  in  the  re 
gion  between  her  horns  and  her  tail. 

Now,  all  this  is  valuable,  and  the  use 
made  of  it  is  laudable,  but  would  we  not 
rather  have  the  account  than  the  cow, 
especially  from  Burroughs  ?  Certainly, 
because  to  us  it  is  the  account  that  he 
has  come  to  stand  for.  And  so,  if  we 
do  not  love  his  scientific  animals  more, 
and  his  scientific  findings  more,  we 
shall,  I  think,  love  all  his  other  books 


44    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

more;  for  we  see  now  that,  from  the 
beginning,  he  has  regarded  the  facts  of 
nature  as  the  solid  substance  of  his  books, 
to  be  kept  as  free  from  fancy  and  from 
false  report,  as  his  interpretation  of  them 
is  to  be  kept  free  from  all  exaggeration 
and  cant. 

Here,  then,  are  a  score  of  volumes  of 
honest  seeing,  honest  feeling,  honest 
reporting.  Such  honesty  of  itself  may 
not  make  good  nature-literature,  but 
without  such  honesty  there  can  be  no 
good  nature-literature. 

Nature-literature  is  not  less  than  the 
truth,  but  more ;  how  much  more, 
Burroughs  himself  suggests  to  us  in  a 
passage  about  his  literary  habits. 

"  For  my  part/'  he  says,  "  I  can  never 
interview  Nature  in  the  reporter  fashion. 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    45 

I  must  camp  and  tramp  with  her  to  get 
any  good,  and  what  I  get  I  absorb  through 
my  emotions  rather  than  consciously 
gather  through  my  intellect.  .  .  .  An 
experience  must  lie  in  my  mind  a  cer 
tain  time  before  I  can  put  it  upon  paper 
—  say  from  three  to  six  months.  If  there 
is  anything  in  it,  it  will  ripen  and  mel 
low  by  that  time.  I  rarely  take  any 
notes,  and  I  have  a  very  poor  memory, 
but  rely  upon  the  affinity  of  my  mind 
for  a  certain  order  of  truths  or  observa 
tions.  What  is  mine  will  stick  to  me, 
and  what  is  not  will  drop  off.  We  who 
write  about  Nature  pick  out,  I  suspect, 
only  the  rare  moments  when  we  have 
had  glimpses  of  her,  and  make  much  of 
them.  Our  lives  are  dull,  our  minds 
crusted  over  with  rubbish  like  those  of 


46    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

pther  people.  Then  writing  about  Na 
ture,  or  about  most  other  subjects,  is  an 
expansive  process ;  we  are  under  the  law 
of  evolution;  we  grow  the  germ  into 
the  tree ;  a  little  original  observation  goes 
a  good  way."  For  "  when  you  go  to 
Nature,  bring  us  good  science  or  else 
good  literature,  and  not  a  mere  inventory 
of  what  you  have  seen.  One  demon 
strates,  the  other  interprets." 

Careful  as  John  Burroughs  has  been 
with  his  facts,  so  careful  as  often  to  bring 
us  excellent  science,  he  yet  has  left  us 
no  inventory  of  the  out-of-doors.  His 
work  is  literature;  he  is  not  a  demon 
strator,  but  an  interpreter,  an  expositor 
who  is  true  to  the  text  and  true  to  the 
whole  of  the  context. 

Our    pleasure     in    Burroughs    as    an 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    47 

interpreter  comes  as  much  from  his 
wholesome  good  sense,  from  his  balance 
and  sanity,  I  think,  as  from  the  assur 
ance  of  his  sincerity.  Free  from  pose 
and  cant  and  deception,  he  is  free  also 
from  bias  and  strain.  There  is  something 
ordinary,  normal,  reasonable,  compan 
ionable,  about  him ;  an  even  tenor  to 
all  his  ways,  a  deliberateness,  naturalness 
to  all  his  paths,  as  if  they  might  have 
been  made  originally  by  the  cows.  So 
they  were. 

If  Burroughs  were  to  start  from 
my  door  for  a  tramp  over  these  small 
Hingham  hills  he  would  cross  the  trout- 
brook  by  my  neighbor's  stone  bridge, 
and,  nibbling  a  spear  of  peppermint  on 
the  way,  would  follow  the  lane  and  the 
cow-paths  across  the  pasture.  Thoreau 


48    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

would  pick  out  the  deepest  hole  in  the 
brook  and  try  to  swim  across;  he  would 
leap  the  stone  walls  of  the  lane,  cut  a 
bee-line  through  the  pasture,  and  drop, 
for  his  first  look  at  the  landscape,  to 
the  bottom  of  the  pit  in  the  seam-face 
granite  quarry.  Here  he  would  pull  out  his 
notebook  and  a  gnarly  wild  apple  from 
his  pocket,  and,  intensely,  critically, 
chemically,  devouring  said  apple,  make 
note  in  the  book  that  the  apples  of  Eden 
were  flat,  the  apples  of  Sodom  bitter,  but 
this  wild,  tough,  wretched,  impossible 
apple  of  the  Hingham  hills  united  all 
ambrosial  essences  in  its  striking  odor 
of  squash-bugs. 

Burroughs  takes  us  along  with  him. 
Thoreau  comes  upon  us  in  the  woods  — 
jumps  out  at  us  from  behind  some  bush, 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    49 

with  a  "Scat!"  Burroughs  brings  us 
home  in  time  for  tea;  Thoreau  leaves 
us  tangled  up  in  the  briars. 

It  won't  hurt  us  to  be  jumped  at  now 
and  then  and  told  to  "scat!"  It  won't 
hurt  us  to  be  digged  by  the  briars.  It  is 
good  for  us,  otherwise  we  might  forget 
that  we  are  beneath  our  clothes.  It  is 
good  for  us  and  highly  diverting, — and 
highly  irritating  too. 

But  Thoreau  stands  alone.  "Walden 
Pond"  is  one  of  America's  certain  con 
tributions  to  the  world's  great  books. 

For  my  part,  when  I  take  up  an  out 
door  book  I  am  glad  if  there  is  quiet  in 
it,  and  fragrance,  and  something  of  the 
saneness  and  sweetness  of  the  sky.  Not 
that  I  always  want  sweet  skies.  It  is 
ninety-eight  degrees  in  the  shade,  and 


50    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

three  weeks  since  there  fell  a  drop  of 
rain.  I  could  sing  like  a  robin  for  a  siz 
zling,  crackling  thunder-shower — less 
for  the  sizzling  and  crackling  than  for 
the  shower.  Thoreau  is  a  succession  of 
showers  —  "tempests";  his  pages  are 
sheet-lightning,  electrifying,  purifying, 
illuminating,  but  not  altogether  condu 
cive  to  peace.  "  Walden  Pond"  is  some 
thing  more  than  a  nature  book.  There 
is  a  clear  sky  to  most  of  Burroughs's 
pages,  a  rural  landscape,  wide,  gently 
rolling,  with  cattle  standing  here  and 
there  beneath  the  trees. 

Burroughs's  natural  history  is  entirely 
natural,  his  philosophy  entirely  reason 
able,  his  religion  and  ethics  very  much 
of  the  kind  we  wish  our  minister  and 
our  neighbor  might  possess;  and  his 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     51 

manner  of  writing  is  so  unaffected  that 
we  feel  we  could  write  in  such  a  manner 
ourselves.  Only  we  cannot. 

Since  the  time  he  can  be  said  to  have 
"led"  a  life,  Burroughs  has  led  a  literary 
life ;  that  is  to  say,  nothing  has  been 
allowed  to  interfere  with  his  writing ; 
yet  the  writing  has  not  been  allowed 
to  interfere  with  a  quiet  successful  busi 
ness — with  his  raising  of  grapes. 

He  has  a  study  and  a  vineyard. 

Not  many  men  ought  to  live  by  the 
pen  alone.  A  steady  diet  of  inspiration 
and  words  is  hard  on  the  literary  health. 
The  writing  should  be  varied  with  some 
good,  wholesome  work,  actual  hard  work 
for  the  hands;  not  so  much  work,  per 
haps,  as  one  would  find  in  an  eighteen- 
acre  vineyard;  yet  John  Burroughs's 


52    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

eighteen  acres  certainly  proved  to  be  no 
check  —  rather,  indeed,  a  stimulus  — 
to  his  writing.  He  seems  to  have  gath 
ered  a  volume  out  of  every  acre;  and 
he  seems  to  have  put  a  good  acre  into 
every  volume.  "Fresh  Fields"  is  the 
name  of  one  of  the  volumes,  "  Leaf  and 
Tendril"  of  another;  but  the  freshness 
of  his  fields,  the  leaves  and  the  tendrils 
of  his  vineyard,  enter  into  them  all. 
The  grapes  of  the  vineyard  are  in  them 
also. 

Here  is  a  growth  of  books  out  of  the 
soil,  books  that  have  been  trimmed, 
trained,  sprayed,  and  kept  free  from  rot. 
Such  books  may  not  be  altogether  ac 
cording  to  the  public  taste;  they  will 
keep,  however,  until  the  public  acquires 
a  better  taste.  Sound,  ripe,  fresh,  early 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     53 

and  late,  a  full  crop !  Has  the  vineyard 
anything  to  do  with  it  ? 

It  is  not  every  farmer  who  should  go 
to  writing,  nor  every  writer  who  should 
go  to  farming;  but  there  is  a  mighty 
waste  of  academic  literature,  of  prema 
ture,  precocious,  lily-handed  literature, 
of  chicken-licken  literature,  because  the 
writers  do  not  know  a  spade  when  they 
see  one,  would  not  call  it  a  spade  if  they 
knew.  Those  writers  need  to  do  less 
writing  and  more  farming,  more  real 
work  with  their  soft  hands  in  partnership 
with  the  elemental  forces  of  nature,  or 
in  comradeship  with  average  elemental 
men  —  the  only  species  extant  of  the 
quality  to  make  writing  worth  while. 

John  Burroughs  had  this  labor,  this 
partnership,  this  comradeship.  His  writ- 


54    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

ing  is  seasoned  and  sane.  It  is  ripe,  and 
yet  as  fresh  as  green  corn  with  the  dew 
in  the  silk.  You  have  eaten  corn  on  the 
cob  just  from  the  stalk  and  steamed  in 
its  own  husk  ?  Green  corn  that  is  corn, 
that  has  all  its  milk  and  sugar  and  flavor, 
is  corn  on  the  cob,  and  in  the  husk — 
is  cob  and  kernel  and  husk  —  not  a 
stripped  ear  that  is  cooked  into  the 
kitchen  air. 

Literature  is  too  often  stripped  of  its 
human  husk,  and  cut  from  its  human 
cob:  the  man  gone,  the  writer  left;  the 
substance  gone,  the  style  left  —  corn  that 
tastes  as  much  like  corn  as  it  tastes  like 
puffed  rice  —  which  tastes  like  nothing 
at  all.  There  is  the  sweetness  of  the 
husk,  the  flavor  of  the  cob,  the  substance 
of  the  uncut  corn  to  John  Burroughs. 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES     55 

There  is  no  lack  of  cob  and  husk  to 
Thoreau  —  of  shell  and  hull,  one  should 
say,  for  he  is  more  like  a  green  walnut 
than  an  ear  of  green  corn.  Thoreau  is 
very  human,  a  whole  man ;  but  he  is 
almost  as  much  a  tree,  and  a  mountain, 
and  a  pond,  and  a  spell  of  weather,  and 
a  state  of  morals.  He  is  the  author  of 
"  Walden,"  and  nobody  else  in  the  world 
is  that ;  he  is  a  lover  of  Nature,  as  ardent 
a  lover  as  ever  eloped  with  her ;  he  is  a 
lover  of  men,  too,  loving  them  with  an 
intensity  that  hates  them  bag  and  bag 
gage;  he  is  poetical,  prophetic,  para 
doxical,  and  utterly  impossible. 

But  he  knew  it.  Born  in  Concord, 
under  the  transcendental  stars,  at  a  time 
when  Delphic  sayings  and  philosophy, 
romance  and  poetry  ran  wild  in  the 


56    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

gardens  where  Bouncing-Bet  and  Way 
ward  Charlie  now  run  wild,  Thoreau 
knew  that  he  was  touched,  and  that  all 
his  neighbors  were  touched,  and  sought 
asylum  at  Walden.  But  Walden  was  not 
distant  enough.  If  John  Burroughs  in 
Roxbury,  New  York,  found  it  necessary 
to  take  to  the  woods  in  order  to  escape 
from  Emerson,  then  Thoreau  should 
have  gone  to  Chicago,  or  to  Xamiltepec. 
It  is  the  strain,  in  Thoreau,  that 
wearies  us ;  his  sweating  among  the 
stumps  and  woodchucks,  for  a  bean  crop 
netting  him  eight  dollars,  seventy-one 
and  one  half  cents.  But  such  beans ! 
Beans  with  minds  and  souls !  Yet,  for 
baking,  plain  beans  are  better  than  these 
transcendental  beans,  because  your  trans 
cendental  beans  are  always  baked  with- 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    57 

out  pork.  A  family  man,  however,  can 
not  contemplate  that  piddling  patch  with 
any  patience,  even  though  he  have  a 
taste  for  literature  as  real  as  his  taste  for 
beans.  It  is  better  to  watch  John  Bur 
roughs  pruning  his  grapevines  for  a  crop 
to  net  him  one  thousand,  three  hundred 
and  twenty-five  dollars,  and  no  cents, 
and  no  half-cents.  Here  were  eighteen 
acres  to  be  cultivated,  whose  fruit  was 
to  be  picked,  shipped,  and  sold  in  the 
New  York  markets  at  a  profit  —  a 
profit  plainly  felt  in  John  Burroughs's 
books. 

Reading  what  I  have  just  said,  as  it 
appeared  in  the  "Atlantic"  for  Novem 
ber,  1910,  Burroughs  wrote  in  the  course 
of  a  letter  to  me  : 

"  I  feel  like  scolding  you  a  little  for 


58    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

disparaging  Thoreau  for  my  benefit. 
Thoreau  is  nearer  the  stars  than  I  am. 
I  may  be  more  human,  but  he  is  as  cer 
tainly  more  divine.  His  moral  and  ethi 
cal  value  I  think  is  much  greater,  and 
he  has  a  heroic  quality  that  I  cannot 
approach." 

Perhaps  no  truer  word  will  ever  be 
said  of  these  two  men  than  that ;  and 
certainly  no  more  generous  word  was 
ever  spoken  by  one  great  writer  of  an 
other,  his  nearest  rival.  I  have  not,  nor 
would  I,  disparage  Thoreau  for  Bur- 
roughs's  benefit.  Thoreau  dwells  apart. 
He  is  long  past  all  disparagement. 
"Walden  Pond"  and  "The  Week,"  if 
not  the  most  challenging,  most  original 
books  in  American  literature,  are,  with 
Whitman's  "  Leaves  of  Grass "  and 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    59 

Emerson's  "  Essays/'  among  those  books. 

Thoreau  and  Burroughs  had  almost 
nothing  in  common  except  their  love 
of  nature,  and  in  that  they  were  farther 
apart  than  in  anything  else,  Thoreau 
searching  by  night  and  day  in  all  wild 
places  for  his  lost  horse  and  hound  while 
Burroughs  quietly  worshiped,  as  his  rural 
divinity,  the  ruminating  cow. 

The  most  worthy  qualities  of  good 
writing  ^are  those  least  noticeable — neg 
ative  qualities  of  honesty,  directness, 
sincerity,  euphony ;  noticeable  only  by 
their  absence.  Yet  in  John  Burroughs 
they  amounted  to  a  positive  charm.  In 
deed,  are  not  these  same  negative  quali 
ties  the  very  substance  of  good  style? 
Such  style  as  is  had  by  a  pair  of  pruning- 
shears,  as  is  embodied  in  the  exquisite 


60    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

lines  of  a  flying  swallow — the  style  that 
is  perfect,  purposeful  adaptability? 

But  there  is  more  than  efficiency  to  John 
Burroughs's  style ;  there  are  strengths  and 
graces  existing  in  and  for  themselves. 
Here  is  a  naturalist  who  has  studied  the 
art  of  writing.  "  What  little  merit  my 
style  has/'  he  declares,  "is  the  result  of 
much  study  and  discipline."  And  whose 
style,  if  it  be  style  at  all,  is  not  the  result 
of  much  study  and  discipline  ?  Flourish, 
fine-writing,  wordiness,  obscurity,  and 
cant  are  exorcised  in  no  other  way;  and 
as  for  the  "  limpidness,  sweetness,  fresh 
ness,"  which  John  Burroughs  says  should 
characterize  outdoor  writing,  and  which 
do  characterize  his  writing,  how  eke 
than  by  study  and  discipline  shall  they 
be  obtained? 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    61 

Outdoor  literature,  no  less  than  other 
types  of  literature,  is  both  form  and  mat 
ter  ;  the  two  are  mutually  dependent,  in 
separably  one;  but  the  writer  is  most 
faithful  to  the  form  when  he  is  most 
careful  of  the  matter.  It  makes  a  vast 
difference  whether  his  interest  is  absorbed 
by  what  he  has  to  say,  or  by  the  possible 
ways  he  may  say  it.  If  John  Burroughs 
wrote  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  as  a  recent 
critic  says  he  did,  it  was  because  he  went 
about  his  writing  as  he  went  about  his 
vineyarding — for  grapes,  for  thoughts, 
and  not  to  see  how  pretty  he  could  make 
a  paragraph  look,  or  into  what  fantastic 
form  he  could  train  a  vine.  The  vine  is 
lovely  in  itself —  if  it  bear  fruit. 

And  so  is  language.  Take  John  Bur- 
roughs's  manner  in  any  of  its  moods :  its 


62    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

store  of  single,  sufficient  words,  for  in 
stance,  especially  the  homely,  rugged 
words  and  idioms,  and  the  flavor  they 
give,  is  second  to  the  work  they  do ;  or 
take  his  use  of  figures  —  when  he  speaks 
of  De  Quincey's  "  discursive,  roundabout 
style,  herding  his  thoughts  as  a  collie 
dog  herds  sheep"  —  and  unexpected, 
vivid,  apt  as  they  are,  they  are  even  more 
effective.  One  is  often  caught  up  by  the 
poetry  of  these  essays  and  borne  aloft, 
but  never  on  a  gale  of  words ;  the  lift 
and  sweep  are  genuine  emotion  and 
thought. 

As  an  essayist — as  a  nature- writer  I 
ought  to  say — John  Burroughs's  literary 
care  is  perhaps  nowhere  so  plainly  seen 
as  in  the  simple  architecture  of  his  essay 
plans,  in  their  balance  and  finish,  a  qual- 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    63 

ity  that  distinguishes  him  from  others 
of  the  craft,  and  that  neither  gift  nor 
chance  could  so  invariably  supply.  The 
common  fault  of  outdoor  books  is  the 
catalogue — raw  data,  notes.  There  are 
paragraphs  of  notes  in  John  Burroughs, 
volumes  of  them  in  Thoreau.  The  aver 
age  nature-writer  sees  not  too  much  of 
nature,  but  knows  all  too  little  of  literary 
values;  he  sees  everything,  gets  a  mean 
ing  out  of  nothing;  writes  it  all  down; 
and  gives  us  what  he  sees,  which  is  pre 
cisely  what  everybody  may  see ;  whereas, 
we  want  also  what  he  thinks  and  feels. 
Some  of  our  present  writers  do  nothing 
but  feel  and  divine  and  fathom — the 
animal  psychologists,  whatever  they  are. 
The  bulk  of  nature-writing,  however, 
is  journalistic,  done  on  the  spot,  into  a 


64    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

notebook,  as  were  the  journals  of  Tho- 
reau  — fragmentary,  yet  with  Thoreau 
often  exquisite  fragments — bits  of  old 
stained  glass,  unleaded,  and  lacking  unity 
and  design. 

No  such  fault  can  be  found  with  John 
Burroughs.  He  went  pencilless  into  the 
woods,  and  waited  before  writing  until  his 
return  home,  until  time  had  elapsed  for 
the  multitudinous  details  of  the  trip  to 
blur  and  blend,  leaving  only  the  domi 
nant  facts  and  impressions  for  his  pen. 
Every  part  of  his  work  is  of  selected 
stock,  as  free  from  knots  and  seams  and 
sapwood  as  a  piece  of  old-growth  pine. 
There  is  plan,  proportion,  integrity  to 
his  essays  —  the  naturalist  living  faith 
fully  up  to  a  sensitive  literary  con 
science. 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    65 

John  Burroughs  was  a  good  but  not  a 
great  naturalist,  as  Audubon  and  Gray 
were  great  naturalists.  His  claim  (and 
Audubon's  in  part)  upon  us  is  literary. 
He  was  a  watcher  in  the  woods  ;  he  made 
a  few  pleasant  excursions  into  the  prime 
val  wilderness,  leaving  his  gun  at  home, 
and  his  camera,  too,  thank  Heaven !  He 
broke  out  no  new  trail,  discovered  no 
new  animal,  no  new  thing.  But  he  saw 
all  the  old,  uncommon  things,  saw  them 
oftener,  watched  them  longer,  through 
more  seasons,  than  any  other  writer  of 
our  out-of-doors;  and  though  he  dis 
covered  no  new  thing,  yet  he  made 
discoveries,  volumes  of  them  —  contri 
butions  largely  to  our  stock  of  literature, 
and  to  our  store  of  love  for  the  earth, 
and  to  our  joy  in  living  upon  it.  He 


66    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

turned  a  little  of  the  universe  into  liter 
ature  ;  translated  a  portion  of  the  earth 
into  human  language;  restored  to  us  our 
garden  here  eastward  in  Eden — .  apple- 
tree  and  all. 

For  a  real  taste  of  fruity  literature, 
try  John  Burroughs's  chapter  on  "The 
Apple."  Try  Thoreau's,  too,— if  you 
are  partial  to  squash-bugs.  There  are 
chapters  in  John  Burroughs,  such  as  "Is 
it  going  to  Rain?"  "A  River  View," 
"  A  Snow-Storm,"  which  seem  to  me  as 
perfect,  in  their  way,  as  anything  that 
has  ever  been  done  —  single,  simple, 
beautiful  in  form, and  deeply  significant; 
the  storm  being  a  piece  of  fine  descrip 
tion,  of  whirling  snow  across  a  geologic 
landscape,  distant,  and  as  dark  as  eter 
nity;  the  whole  wintry  picture  lighted 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    67 

and  warmed  at  the  end  by  a  glowing 
touch  of  human  life : 

"We  love  the  sight  of  the  brown  and 
ruddy  earth  ;  it  is  the  color  of  life,  while 
a  snow-covered  plain  is  the  face  of 
death  ;  yet  snow  is  but  the  mark  of  life- 
giving  rain  ;  it,  too,  is  the  friend  of  man 
—  the  tender,  sculpturesque,  immacu 
late,  warming,  fertilizing  snow." 

There  are  many  texts  in  these  vol 
umes,  many  themes  ;  and  in  them  all 
there  is  one  real  message:  that  this  is  a 
good  world  to  live  in  ;  that  these  are 
good  men  and  women  to  live  with  ;  that 
life  is  good,  here  and  now,  and  alto 
gether  worth  living. 


Ill 

IT  was  in  October  that  I  last  saw  him  — 
at  Woodchuck  Lodge.  November  22  he 
wrote : 

I  neglected  to  make  any  apologies  for 
the  long  letter  I  wrote  you  the  other 
day.  I  promise  not  to  do  so  again.  lam 
enclosing  an  old  notebook  of  mine,  filled 
with  all  sorts  of  jottings  as  you  will  see. 
I  send  it  for  a  keepsake. 

We  are  off  for  California  to-morrow. 
Hope  to  be  there  in  early  December. 
We  leave  Chicago  on  the  29th.  My 
address  there  will  be  La  Jolla,  San  Diego. 
Good  luck  to  you  and  yours. 
Always  your  friend 

JOHN  BURROUGHS 


THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES    69 

He  kept  his  promise  too  too  well.  This 
was  the  last  letter  I  ever  had  from  him. 
He  dreaded  that  California  journey. 
San  Diego  is  a  long,  long  way  from 
Woodchuck  Lodge  when  one  is  nearing 
eighty-four.  Dr.  Barrus  and  two  of  her 
nieces  made  the  trip  with  him,  Henry 
Ford,  out  of  his  friendship,  meeting  the 
expenses  of  the  winter  sojourn.  But  Cal 
ifornia  had  no  cure  for  the  winter  that 
had  at  last  fallen  upon  the  old  natural 
ist.  Sickness,  and  longing  for  home,  and 
other  ills  befell  him.  He  was  in  a  hos 
pital  for  many  days.  But  visitors  came 
to  see  him  as  usual ;  he  went  among  the 
schools  speaking ;  nor  was  his  pen  idle 
—  not  yet ;  one  of  the  last  things,  if  not 
the  very  last  he  wrote  for  publication, 
being  a  vigorous  protest  against  free 


70    THE  SEER  OF  SLABSIDES 

verse,  called  "The  Reds  of  Literature.'* 
But  all  the  while  he  was  thinking  of 
home,  and  planning  for  his  birthday 
party  at  the  Lodge  back  on  the  ancestral 
farm. 

We  celebrated  it.  He  was  there. 
But  he  did  not  know.  On  the  third 
day  of  April,  his  eighty-fourth  birth 
day,  followed  by  a  few  of  his  friends, 
mourned  by  all  the  nation,  he  was  laid 
to  rest  in  the  hill  pasture,  beside  the 
boulder  on  which  he  had  played  as  a 
child,  and  where  only  a  few  months  be 
fore  he  had  taken  me  to  see  the  glory 
of  hill  and  sky  that  had  been  his  life 
long  theme,  and  that  were  to  be  his 
sleep  forever. 

He  died  on  the  train  that  was  bring 
ing  him  back  from  California,  his  last  de- 


THE  SEER.QP.  S^ABSIDES    71 

sire  not  quite  fulfilled.  He  was  a  wholly 
human  man ;  and  an  utterly  simple  man  ; 
and  so  true  to  himself,  that  his  last  words, 
uttered  on  the  speeding  train,  expressed 
and  completed  his  whole  life  with  sin 
gular  beauty :  "  How  far  are  we  from 
home,"  he  asked,  —  and  the  light  failed; 
and  the  train  sped  on  as  if  there  were 
need  of  hurry  now ! 

w  Serene,  I  fold  my  hands  and  wait, 

Nor  care  for  wind,  nor  tide,  nor  sea, 

v     I  rave  no  more  'gainst  Time  or  Fate 

For  lo !  my  own  shall  come  to  me." 


THE  END 


(fflbe 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


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OVERDUE. 


vMJN  lb    1S44 

niN  2  7  WR  *  3 

901  * 

J(jL27'66H7R08 

LD  21-100m-7,'40  (6936s) 

gr }  w  *3.  «>    <    v/   Jt  V^ 

The   seer  of  Slabside 


B972 

S53 


RER  22  mr 


84 


DEC  4 


SSL 

1 
_ 


Mltl    -. 


457646 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


